Sunday, February 3, 2013

From ‘Sparks of Divinity. The Teachings of B K S Iyengar. From 1959 to 1975’. Compiled by Noelle Perez-Christiaens

Once he told the boys: “The strength of the will is in the buttocks. If you can sqeeze those muscles, if they are strong, you have the force of will.”

We should have a purpose, see it clearly, then get detached from it completely and work.

It is from the spinal column that all the nerves come, and each ends in a pore of the skin. You must control each nerve and each centimeter of the skin.

Love must be incarnated in the smallest pore of the skin, the smallest cell of the body, to make them intelligent, so they can collaborate with all the other ones, in the big republic of the body.

Relaxation means emptiness

The eyes must go to the region that does not work, not to the one that does.

From head to heels, find your center.

While doing the postures, your mind should be in half-consciousness, which does not mean sleep. It means silence, emptiness, space, which can then be filled with an acute awareness of the sensations given by the posture. You watch yourself from inside. It is a full silence.

The body has to be invaded by the intelligence; each part has to become intelligent.

When the active brain becomes passive, the passive brain becomes active. That is meditation.

Everyone has a side which is better than the other. Balance between Ha, the right, and tha, the left, is yoga. Perfect harmony means perfect control……

When I ask you to stretch your spine, you stretch in the middle where susumna is, but you should relax in the middle and stretch on both sides.

You cannot say you are intelligent if you do not also have body intelligence.

Just as a goldsmith purifies gold, so must the body be constantly purified and purged, so that the inner gold may shine.

The mind, the thinker, must be made utterly and completely still to know what the Self is.

An alert, erect spine creates a spiritual intensity of concentration that burns out distracting thoughts and the brooding over past and future, and leaves one in the virginal, fresh present.

If a man has valor, but his sword is rusty, of what use is his valor? If a man has spiritual aspirations but his body is corrupt, of what use are his aspirations.

Be so silent that you hear the sound within ….

Yoga is the process of stilling the mind and then merging the individual soul (jivatma) with Universal Soul (Paramatma)

Think light! Try to impart a feeling of lightness to the body. …This can be achieved by mentally extending yourself outwards from the center of the body i.e. think tall.

During inhalation, the bredth should move exactly like clouds spreading in the sky.

As long as the body is not held firm, meditation is impossible, because the movement of the body is a disturbance of the intellect.

When the brain and the mind are silent, one experiences the consciousness of the self.

When in mediatation, look with your ears, not with your eyes. When you look with your eyes, the brain is aggressive (that is, when you concentrate on an object with the energy concentrated in the frontal brain, where the eyes are). When you look with the ears, the brain is silent. Ears bring the art of silence. Eyes bring the art of action.

An ethical diet is to eat as long as saliva comes in your mouth when seeing a meal, and to stop at the very moment it doesn’t come.

In pranayama, when you inhale, do not disturb the position of the consciousness of the brain or the eyes or the eyelids. Let them explore or see into the lungs and into the spine. Then your will understand what I said.

The ribs are the wings of the body. Open your wings.

The inner gaze must be in the center. If consciousness is in either one of the feet, the posture goes off balance.

Samadhi is where everything is stilled, where you are completely conscious.

Yoga makes an extrovert from an introvert, and an introvert from an extrovert

The intelligence should be everywhere. Your intelligence is only in the brain; that is why you;re suffering.

Pupils should be self-aware, not self-conscious.

When one is in a meditative state, the frontal brain is resting, and the back of the brain is acting.

You should know how to relax in action.

When you have learned to stretch completely, you have learned to relax completely.

We have two physical eyes, but every pore of the body is also an eye.

Even the little toe has to work to retain its awareness.

Why do you live in memory? Memory is useless if you repeat the past; memory is necessary if you use it to develop. If repetition is taking place, then that memory retards the path of evolution.

Awaken the dormant intelligence even in the minutest fiber. This will help the neighbouring fibers to revitalize, to realize their functions, to act, to experience what you have created.

When we look at something with intensity, this intensity lasts only a few seconds, then we do nothing more than look in the mirror of the mind. We must keep the initial intensity for a longer time. ……

If the chest is the mother and the air the child, with inhalation the mother lets her child come to her, and with exhalation she lets him go without following him but still protecting him.

In kumbhaka, you should not hold the breath, but the breath should hold you.

When you close your eyes, do not just close your eyes. The right and the left ears have to move inwards for the eyes to close. ….

And the state of absolute calm? When both inhalation and exhalation are done without any sort of tension, without any sort of support, it becomes absolute meditation.

The brain watching the mind and the mind watching the brain, so there is no movement in the brain and the mind. And that is meditation

In inhalation, normal inhalation, the cosmic energy is brought in and embraced. In exhalation, the individual energy is drawn out so that it completely mingles or is united with the universal or cosmic energy.

Exhalation is the art of surrender.

If you open the armpits, the brain becomes light, and you cannot brood or become depressed.

Circumferential action occurs when the vertical and horizontal meet. If you have to stretch vertically, stretch horizontally as well. When you stretch both ways, the brain is mature.

To understand the world, you open your eyes. To understand the inside world, you should close your eyes.

Use fully whatever limited intelligence you have, then automatically it opens a little more and can accumulate more.

When the pose is perfect, there is morality.

Opening the eyes wide releases pain and stops dullness of the brain.

The front brain deals only with the external world. Quieten this brain and retire within. The back brain leads inside…. Use the back brain for meditation.

Meditation is one of the hardest and finest adjustments of our intellect.

For a wrong done by others, men demand justice, while for that done by themselves, they plead for mercy and forgiveness. The yogi, on the other hand, believes that for a wrong done by himself there should be justice, while for that done by another there should be forgiveness. He knows and teaches others how to live. Always striving to perfect himself, he shows them by his love and compassion how to improve themselves.

The still waters of a lake reflect the beauty around it. When the mind is still, the beauty of the Self is reflected in it.

There should be constant analysis throughout the action, not afterwards. This is understanding. The real meaning of knowledge is that your action and your analysis synchronize.